Vol. I.]

[Footnote 18: A method of alluding to the Deity, which, in
its playful simplicity, is quite impossible in English.]

Having arrived in Venice, he was received courteously by the Patriarch
Grimani and his brother Messer Vettorio, who showed him a thousand
favours. For that Patriarch, after a few days, he painted in oils, in an
octagon of four braccia, a most beautiful Psyche to whom, as to a
Goddess, on account of her beauty, incense and votive offerings are
presented; which octagon was placed in a hall in the house of that lord,
wherein is a ceiling in the centre of which there curve some festoons
executed by Camillo Mantovano, an excellent painter in representing
landscapes, flowers, leaves, fruits, and other suchlike things. That
octagon, I say, was placed in the midst of four pictures each two
braccia and a half square, executed with stories of the same Psyche, as
was related in the Life of Genga, by Francesco da Forli; and the octagon
is not only beyond all comparison more beautiful than those four
pictures, but even the most beautiful work of painting that there is in
all Venice. After that, in a chamber wherein Giovanni Ricamatori of
Udine had executed many works in stucco, he painted some little figures
in fresco, both nude and draped, which are full of grace. In like
manner, in an altar-piece that he executed for the Nuns of the Corpus
Domini at Venice, he painted with much diligence a Dead Christ with the
Maries, and in the air an Angel who has the Mysteries of the Passion in
the hands. He made the portrait of M. Pietro Aretino, which, as a rare
work, was sent by that poet to King Francis, with some verses in praise
of him who had painted it. And for the Nuns of S. Cristina in Bologna,
of the Order of Camaldoli, the same Salviati, at the entreaty of Don
Giovan Francesco da Bagno, their Confessor, painted an altar-piece with
many figures, a truly beautiful picture, which is in the church of that
convent.

Then, having grown weary of the life in Venice, as one who remembered
that of Rome, and considering that it was no place for men of design,
Francesco departed in order to return to Rome. And so, making a detour
by Verona and Mantua, in the first of which places he saw the many
antiquities that are there, and in the other the works of Giulio Romano,
he made his way back to Rome by the road through Romagna, and arrived
there in the year 1541. There, having rested a little, the first